Back then, I said:
The center position is so powerful. Having seen the attention and (faux) adulation given to Justice Kennedy over the years, the Justices must be eyeing the vacancy. Some new person will get Kennedy's seat, but he is likely to be a staunch conservative like Gorsuch. The real vacancy we're seeing is in the "swing vote" position, and any Justice could feel pulled to try to sit there. Now, the liberals can't really aspire to occupy the position, but one of them, probably Justice Kagan, might become the force behind the swinging of one of the conservatives, and Roberts is the most likely to get swung. I picture Roberts seeing an opportunity to improve the reputation of the Court and to overcome the overt political look it's acquired over the years. I think there should be more elegant ways to do that than to simply throw his vote to the liberal 4 now and then. But if that's all he can do, I suspect he will.
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And that observation from 2 years ago is why so many enjoy your insight and writings.
And that observation from 2 years ago is why so many enjoy your insight and writings
Concur.
Justice gosnell go for it.
IOW, not the law.
Politics.
Since we hack our inability to amend our constitution by getting the SCOTUS to do it for us, this makes Roberts the most powerful political force in the country. The president might be temporarily be the head of the government but Chief Justice is effectively our king, appointed for life and almost impossible to legally remove.
Tell me again why we allow a committee of 9 lawyers make our country’s most long term, most impactful strategic and cultural decisions? Does that sound like a recipe for success?
Good insight, but...
"throw his vote to the liberal 4 now and then" Then and now, I don't understand why that isn't manifestly evil. A pure betrayal of those who trusted him to judge.
Chief Justice John "I think the decision is wrong, but I'm voting for it anyway" Roberts has ruled.
Labels (e.g. Fetal-American or 1/2 American), summary judgments, cruel and unusual punishment, and age discrimination are upheld by the justicees for social progress and profit.
Well Kennedy sure went from right wing Reagan appointee to squishy as hell during his tenure.
That Obergefell gay marriage decisions is (regardless of what you think about the policy) incomprehensible garbage.
I think maybe he was losing it mentally (a la Biden), but then again his clerks were doing the writing I’m sure.
Justice gosnell go for it.
Gosnell, plural. Also Mengele. And excess deaths, too.
He is a politician, just as Earl Warren was. He is getting ready for Biden.
"I picture Roberts seeing an opportunity to improve the reputation of the Court and to overcome the overt political look it's acquired over the years."
Now that's funny.
Opportunism improves the reputation of the Court -- with whom? Progs will take their wins, of course, but they are interested in results, not "reputation." Much as we deplorables would prefer some semblance of the rule of law, we are entirely cynical-- there's no way to improve or depress the reputation in our eyes.
Politically motivated reasoning overcomes the political look -- ACA mandate was no tax, Congress said it wasn't a tax, but wait, it's a tax, problem solved! or: hospital privileges are standard requirement for surgical procedures, but wait, now there's "precedent" to make an exception for abortion, so: problem solved! -- what else but naked judicial politics is there to Roberts shoving it down our throats, good and hard?
It's hard to resist tongue--bathing adulation, no matter where it comes from. You get co-opted by it. That's not even getting to the power trip it must be to have everyone hanging on your every vote.
There are still no pro-lifers on the Supreme Court. I don't think Mr. Balance will like it when we have one up there.
And by "pro-lifer" I mean, somebody who knows what a person is.
There are several people on the Supreme Court who want to run away from Roe v. Wade. But that's not a pro-life position. That's a calculated move to save the Court from its own disgrace.
Unfortunately, only Republican Judges are "Swing votes" the Democrat judges are hard-core leftists and vote as a left-wing bloc. If the Court becomes "political" that's only because sometimes the R's also start voting as a bloc - like the D's ALWAYS do.
People seem to forget that Roberts voted the liberal way on Obamacare and Campaign finance reform. His left-wing views have been there for a long time and were masked by the prescience of Kennedy.
BTW, I never supported him. I didn't trust Bush-II and Arlen Specter LOVED Him. Why are conservatives so stupid? They never seem to understand that if an R picks a SCOTUS judge and the Liberals are only moderately critical of it, its because the Judge is a liberal like Souter or a squish like Roberts. Instead, they run around and see "Look at what a great pick that was, why even Liberal D supports it". Morons.
Roberts sides with the good guys on Espinoza!
NYT excoriates Roberts as a rigid ideologue in 3, 2, 1...
To me he has made the court's reputation worse:
>Roberts seeing an opportunity to improve the reputation of the Court and to overcome
>the overt political look it's acquired over the years.
In a world where Trump has the opportunity to replace one of the four Democrat appointed justices, Roberts would probably still act as a "swing vote" by joining the 5 other Republican justices to make 6-3 decisions so he could write the opinions himself on controversial matters and make them as narrow as possible if he isn't able to actually swing the vote itself.
Although nominating Roberts turns out to have been a colossal mistake by George W. Bush, an equally great Bush mistake is that Thomas was not nominated to be chief justice in 2005.
Roberts has shown how easy he is to roll--just tell him that the conservative position "threatens the Court's moral authority" and he reacts like Pavlov's dog.
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